In 1866, Robert LeRoy Parker was born in Beaver (Utah). Surely his name will be completely unknown, but the nickname by which he was known sounds the same:Butch Cassidy.
The gang of outlaws that he was part of along with The Sundance Kid was one of the most famous in the violent and turbulent history of the American West in the second half of the 19th century. As a young man, Robert worked in a Wyoming butchery, where he ran into a friend named Mike Cassidy (hence his nickname).
After several jobs as a cowboy and an incident with the law for the sale of stolen horses, Butch joined the McCarty brothers' gang in 1887 with whom he began to train in what would become his great specialty:train robbery and banks. With the proceeds Butch bought a ranch in Wyoming that would become a refuge for him and his cronies after his criminal activities. This did not prevent him from being arrested in 1894 and sentenced to two years in prison at Laramie State Prison for horse theft and extortion. He only served eighteen months of sentence by reaching an agreement with the governor of the state in which he promised not to reoffend in Wyoming.
Once free, Butch formed a gang of outlaws known as The Wild Bunch (wild group) which included among others Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, known by the nickname of The Sundance Kid. The gang soon became notorious for its attacks on banks, trains, and people transporting mining company payrolls. Although Butch was personally opposed to physical violence, several members of his gang did get involved in bloody incidents with lawmen, some of whom were killed; several members of the gang also died in shootouts with the authorities.
The main affected by the activities of the gang (mining companies, railways and banks) organized a party to capture the two leaders of the gang. That party, led by Pinkerton agency detective Charles Siringo, narrowed the siege on the gang, killing several of its members.
After a stay in New York in which they were accompanied by the couple from Sundance, Ethel Place, our two protagonists decided that their stay in the United States had become too dangerous and set off on their own for South America in 1901. In the following years there are different records of bank and train robberies carried out by Yankee bandits in Argentina and Chile. Sundance temporarily returned to his country to accompany his partner Ethel, who decided to return to the United States fed up with the life they led. He then went back to his fellow sufferer.
Butch and Sundance ended up in 1908 in Bolivia, where they stole the payroll of a mining company. They were chased and cornered by the police and the army in a small shack in a Bolivian town. Those who have seen the movie Two Men and a Fate will no doubt remember the shocking final scene with Newman and Redford facing a gunfight.
In reality, the facts were not like that. According to the official version, the party that cornered the couple was much smaller and was mostly made up of local police officers accompanied by a couple of soldiers; Suddenly they heard two shots inside the house and when they entered they found the bodies of Butch and The Kid, both shot in the forehead.
Later this version has been questioned and there are those who affirm that both Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid returned safely to the United States and lived quietly there with new identities until their death by natural death.
I leave you a link about it:
http://articles.latimes.com/1996-01-14/local/me-24474_1_butch-cassidy-and-sundance-kid
Whoever wants to know more about this and other fascinating stories about the West can not leave reading Gregorio Doval's book A Brief History of the Wild West:Gunslingers and Outlaws, which has served as a source for this entry.